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India's Animal Feeds to Reach $30 Billion By 2020, Says Bank Report

INDIA - Animal feeds have been growing at a compound annual growth rate of eight per cent and will develop into a $30 billion industry by 2020.

A report by Yes Bank Indian Feed Industry – Revitalising Nutritional Security Knowledge has forecast a rapid expansion from the current level of $15 billion.

As per an estimate, the demand for animal protein and dairy products in India will increase the feed consumption volumes to 28 million tonnes by 2017-18.

The report said that while the potential feed requirement is huge and stands around at around 96 million tonnes, only 20.3 million tonnes was produced during 2012-13.

Nitin Puri, President and national head of food and agribusiness research management at Yes Bank, lead author, said there is huge scope for the growth in the sector with industry becoming more organised.

With this growth rate, India will soon become the largest feed market in the coming years. The feed industry requirements that are met with the compound feed are only 11 per cent, 14 per cent for aqua feed and 55 per cent for poultry feed.

The feed demand from broiler sector will grow at a rate of 8 per cent, feed for layers will grow by 5-6 per cent, cattle feed will grow by 6 per cent and aqua will record the highest growth of 9 per cent in the next five years.

Currently, poultry sector (that includes broiler and layers) consumes 12.4 million tonnes, that will grow to 22 million tonnes, cattle feed consumption is at 7.5 million tonnes will grow to 67 million tonnes and aqua feed consumption will grow from 1 million tonnes to 7 million tonnes in the next five years.

With changing income levels and more people eating fish, meat and chicken, there will be a higher requirement of processed dairy, aqua and poultry products, which in turn will result in higher feed requirement, the report said.

The per capita meat and milk consumption is growing, especially in China and India and is projected to remain high in the European Union, North America, Brazil and Russia.

Mr Puri also said that feed sector are taking new initiative from feed production to storage, which includes silage, green fodder hydroponics and bypass protein feed.

Multinational companies eyeing the lucrative Indian markets, the animal feed industry in India will have to increase their capacities keeping in mind the quality issues to leverage on the growing demand for compound feed, Mr Puri's report adds.